An Interesting Detachment
by RowenaR
Summary: Jo Lupo leaves Eureka. Alone. Part of my Holiday Fic Request Meme.


**Author:** RowenaR

**Rating:** K+

**Category:** gen

**Disclaimer:** EUReKA... I wish it would belong to anyone else it currently belongs to but that's just me *sighs

**Summary: **Jo Lupo leaves Eureka. Alone.**  
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**A/N: **Holiday Fic Request Meme again, virgin fic for the fandom. I'd actually planned for a different fic to be my first fic in the fandom but it's been on the back burner for a while now and this one was a little more urgent. And it's kind of fix it fic, too, so that's okay. I have to admit, I stopped watching EUReKA more or less after they wrote Tess out of it and Kavan Smith's Andy into it but still decided to do it as per **mac**'s request, so I had to do this on ep descriptions and discussions. If I did it wrong... it could still be AU (which it probably will be anyway after the last eps of this Season have been aired)? *sighs

Anyway, as always: Not a native speaker, so please excuse any weird grammatical constructions, run-ons and typos. Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast my marshmellows.

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><p><strong>An Interesting Detachment<strong>

"_Cryptic words meander  
>Now there is a song beneath the song<br>One day you'll learn  
>You'll soon discern its true meaning<br>An interesting detachment  
>A listless poem of love sincere<br>Desire, despair  
>Overlapping melodies."<em>

_Maria Taylor, "Song Beneath The Song"_

Life's not fair, they say. It's just fairer than death, William Goldman once added. It's all bullshit, she can tell them.

It pisses her off, this inability to accept life as it is and move on. It pisses her off that the reason is entirely private. It pisses her off that she wanted a forever.

She wanted a forever and got a rewrite of history. She hates the new history. She hates that Zane first hated her and now wants to get away from her. She hates that she still started sleeping with him. She hates that she never told him yes when he still loved her. She wants to go home.

It's why she sits at the wheel of her car now, driving away from Eureka. To get away from the focal point of the changing of history. They once told her that the farther away she got from Eureka, the more the world's timeline would resemble the one she used to know. Maybe somewhere out there she'll start feeling like herself again. Maybe somewhere out there she'll be able to forget Zane and everything he made her feel, now and in that last timeline.

She'd said she wanted to find herself. She hates that she did that. It sounded tacky and it was a lie. She knows who she is. She just doesn't know who everyone else is anymore. She thought she'd get used to it, like Carter and the rest did but she didn't. She never told anyone she hated the new job, even though she made twice as much as she made in her old one. It's the old one she misses, not the new one she appreciates.

So when the expedition took off, she got into her car, just to get away. She might have been driving for thirty minutes now or thirty days and she doesn't care. Like she doesn't really care that she didn't say goodbye. Not really, anyway but Carter will know. He'll understand. Maybe he'll be the only one but he's the only one that counts, anyway.

When she spots the lonely figure by the road first from a quarter mile away, she keeps on driving, concentrating on the road. When the figure didn't move from five hundred feet away, her instincts start to get into gear. Two hundred feet away and she starts to think she might be hallucinating. Fifty feet away, her feet betray her by stepping on the brakes instead of the gas.

"Going somewhere, Josephina?" he says with a grin and where did he just come from and why didn't she lock her doors the minute she recognized his face? She doesn't answer. "I'm not a figment of your imagination, you know. You can talk to me."

She glares at him.

He grins some more. "You never did answer all my questions. Figured I couldn't leave without getting my answers."

She blinks.

"Josephina?" Could he just _stop_ calling her that? _Her_ Zane did that and despite everything, this one isn't. Hers, that is. He isn't hers.

She grabs the wheel tighter. "You're not supposed to be here."

A touch of nonchalance. "When did that ever keep me from being somewhere?" He could be anything. A hologram. A clone. A robot. She can't hate herself for whishing he is nothing but the genuine article. "See, I knew you wouldn't have the answer. So you're leaving Eureka?"

He has no right for sounding hurt. "You were set on leaving it, too."

"That's not the point, Jo." She doesn't ask what is. She knows that. "Where are you headed?"

The reply comes too fast. "None of your business."

"Oh fine, don't tell me then. Surprise me." She fails to understand where this is going. Her brain doesn't compute, as the geeks in GD's lab would say. "Well, what are you waiting for? There's a road in front of us that wants to be driven."

It's Zane, she thinks. This is pure Zane. There's no way he _isn't_ Zane. It feels like a punch in the gut. "Why?"

He angles his head to the right, just a bit. "Why what, Jo?" Why did you come back, why aren't you on your way to Titan, why do you look so much like him? "And I might tell you. If you would just start driving already."

She doesn't want to know the answer. The only reason she starts driving is that she's tired of being in one place for too long. She just needs movement to be able to think. So she gets moving. He doesn't start telling. Instead, he just settles in. Just as well. Better, even. If she isn't going to get rid of him like she just got rid of Eureka, at least she gets some time for figuring out a strategy how to deal with this new variable in the equation. At least that means she's not stuck anymore. And she has Zane for company, even if it's not _her_ Zane, yet. Could be worse. She smiles.


End file.
